Thinning The Blood
by bezitazita
Summary: There was something about Saiyan blood that was keeping them from reaching their full potential; he called it "thickening in the blood". Alternate Universe. Mature themes.
1. In Need of Distraction

The sweet breeze of spring rolled in low over the grounds of Capsule Corporation. For the first time in months, the windows were thrown in to invite the soft scent of evening time. The table was set and ready for dinner as a family. Bunny Briefs bustled about, humming along with the radio as she prepared a spread for no reason in particular. Bulma had stepped out over an hour when she received a phone call. She could only guess who was on the other line. It was all too often that Bulma would receive a phone call from the ex and would be downtrodden for the rest of the day. The two had insisted on remaining friends, stating that their separation was amicable, but the matriarch was inclined to suspect that it was amicable in one direction only.

Dr. Briefs stepped into the kitchen, a towel draped over his shoulders. After a day in the engine shop craned over various machinery, a quiet evening with his wife and youngest daughter was in order. The three of them had set aside dinner time as family time as per Bulma's request. The divorce had been somewhat hard on her, especially since the relationship had been everything she had known for the better part of a decade. To a young heart, seven years was an eternity. She had been a bride for just over a year when the two had gone their separate ways. Being back at home with Mom and Dad was a small comfort, though the two noted the defeat in her eyes. She had lost more than Yamcha in the divorce.

Bulma came in through the back door, her phone still in one hand as she wiped at her eyes with the other. Stifling a sniffle, she plastered on a weak smile and commented on the smell of dinner. Bunny and Dr. Briefs gave each other a knowing glance before putting the matter behind them. Bulma would talk if she needed to talk and there was no way to coax her if she didn't want to comment.

"How did the last of that diagnostic come up, Dad?" Bulma asked as she took her usual place at the table. She kept her smile in place, though it didn't reach the mascara smears around her eyes.

"The results are looking up, B," the doctor stated. He ladled a hefty portion of potatoes onto his plate. "I think the core is still good. There is some real potential in your designs. We need to run some more calculations to see if running it in flight would be viable. I see no reason why it shouldn't work."

"That is good news," she said, some of the happiness returning to her smile. "I have some ideas for a new ship that I want to get on paper before bed. I want to redo last year's Ranger model. I think we can make it faster without compromising power."

Dr. Briefs chuckled, "That's my baby girl! You sure got your father's brain!"

"And her mother's looks," Bunny chimed in, just now taking her seat with the family. "Both of our daughters were so fortunate."

Dinner was a welcomed distraction for Bulma nowadays. True, she had her work, but the absence of love in her life was heavy and cold in her heart. It had been six months since her and Yamcha had come to the conclusion that they were going different ways in life. They had met as teenagers with stars in their eyes and the world before them. Bulma brought solidity into Yamcha's life and Yamcha gave her a sense of adrenaline. It was Yamcha who inspired Bulma to actually return to college after finishing schooling so young, hence the title of Dr. that was attached to her name (though she refused to go by Dr. Briefs; that was her father's title, after all). Bulma had inspired Yamcha to risk it all and try out for the major leagues, turning his lifelong hobby of baseball into an actual career. They had pushed each other into betterment, however larger issues loomed.

Once the prolonged honeymoon period ended and the glass was broken, the two were left with very little in common other than a shared history. The arguments intensified and distrust set in. Through the counsel of friends and family, they were advised that this was common in couples that had been together for over five years. The dust eventually settled and things mellowed.

Yamcha proposed to her over dinner one night. It was planned down to the flowers on the restaurant table, the music the band was playing, and the dessert they shared. Beneath a shroud of whipped cream and strawberries was a chocolate box with a ring that looked good enough to eat. In pre-proposal discussion, Dr. Briefs had insisted that Yamcha take some extra cash to get Bulma something extra special to wear for better or for worse. The moment was immortalized by the best photographer in all of West City, yet another gift from Mama and Papa Briefs. At once, wedding preparations began and the gild of joy was swept over the young couple once again. The media was in a frenzy over the "wedding of the year"; Capsule Corporation's multibillion dollar baby and the sweetheart of the major leagues were to be married.

Once the cake was gone and the thank you notes had been sent, the buzz of the wedding died down and the marriage began. Bulma and Yamcha had decided to own their own house rather than living on the Capsule grounds with her parents. They had a smaller, yet still gargantuan, house on the outskirts of town. Bulma had drawn up design plans for the décor with one of the top interior decorators in the entire metropolitan area; the house looked like it was out of a magazine. Still, with everything a woman could ask for, something was missing.

She had taken the test on a Sunday morning. Hands trembling as she waited for the results, she took a deep breath and let her mind calm. She opened her eyes to see two lines staring back at her. She was going to be a mother. With all of the happiness in the world, she wept, holding onto the porcelain of the sink for support. She ran out of the bathroom and into the arms of her husband. He spun her around, laughing and chanting and crying. They would have one more to help fill their home. Secretly, each of them hoped that a child was what they needed to reignite what was missing from their hearts.

Nearly immediately, Bulma fell ill. Though she was able to keep with her duties as entrepreneur and inventor, her mood was sour and her emotions were raw. The arguing was brutal and personal. Though her and her husband wanted so badly to push forward, the waters were rough. At wits end, they had resolved to see a counselor to work everything out with an impartial third party. Bulma wrote the number for a renowned marital therapist on a sticky note and affixed it to their bathroom mirror. First thing in the morning she would call and make them appointment.

The morning didn't come as planned, however. Midway through dreaming she awoke, dizzy with pain. Every synapse cried out, knowing something was terribly wrong. She managed to wake Yamcha. His expression remained etched in her mind—panic, knowing, and sadness all combined as he jumped from the bed to call for help. For several painful moments she lay in the near silence with the sound of her husband's panicked voice resonating from down the hallway as he plead with emergency response for some help.

She had asked her nurse to pull the blackout curtains closed, darkening the hospital room and protecting her from the world outside. Everyone outside her little world continued on as if their lives hadn't ended as hers had. She had refused all of the flowers and cards that had been sent to her from distant friends and relatives, keeping only the bouquet of yellow roses that her mother had brought from her garden. She reached out and touched the stem of one rose, running her finger down the length, its thorns scratching just short of puncturing the flesh.

"Why did this happen?" she asked her doctor after being admitted. Tears were hot as they streamed down her reddened face. Though he had explained earlier that miscarriage didn't always have a definite cause, he knew the meaning of her outcry at present. His grip slackening slightly on his clipboard, he bowed his head and shook it slowly. Nothing he could have said would have taken any of the pain away. She didn't even hear his words of apology over her own grief.

Once she returned home, she and Yamcha walked through life through a haze for a few days. Through a mess of tears and hushed voices, they took off their wedding bands on a Sunday morning. Rather than fight on as lovers they would part ways as friends. Grasping at straws wasn't benefitting anyone and they admitted it together. Once in their respective homes again, their married home went on the market and they filed their divorce papers. As if a weight had lifted, Yamcha rebounded back to the jovial young man he had been in their earlier days. Bulma's heart was still heavy, but she kept their friendship as planned.

A crash of ceramic brought Bulma back to the present as her father's cat knocked a full gravy boat from the table and onto the floor. She shook her head, clearing her down thoughts. Her mother and father were chortling, playfully scolding the cat for making a mess of things. At once, one of the Capsule Corp. cleaning bots whirred into the room and cleaned the broken boat and its contents from the tiles. By this point, her parents were done eating and were getting up from their chairs. Her mother noticed that her plate was still mostly full.

"Bulma-chan, you've hardly touched your plate," Mrs. Briefs said in a sweet, concerned voice. "Is everything alright?"

"Things are fine, Mom," she reassured, though not convinced herself. "I had a big lunch. I will reheat my meal later."

Bunny took the plate from her daughter's hand, insisting, "let me take care of that for you. I will plate it and put it in the fridge. You go relax."

Bulma gave her mother a sincere smile and ducked out the back door to the balcony. The air was cooling rapidly and she pulled on her sweater sleeves in response. She leaned against the railing of the porch, looking up at the crescent moon and blanket of stars above. Instinctively, she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket. As she lit up, she thought she saw something strange above, almost like the waves that radiate from hot sand. Squinting and straining, she saw nothing of any real note. Returning back to her vice, she examined the warning label on her pack. As the most brilliant young mind on the planet, she knew the risk associated with smoking. For the umpteenth time, she resolved that this was the last pack. Truly, she would quit once life stopped being so damn stressful.

She paced around the deck as she smoked the cigarette down to the filter. With a sigh she tossed the butt into the garden planter at the end of the porch. For a split second she could have sworn she saw a bright glimpse of green in the bushes. Now suspicious, she turned to go back into the house. She would need to get a hold of security about the strange feeling she was getting. If there was one thing Bulma prided herself on (besides her intelligence and good looks) it was her intuition. Before she had the time to make it to the door, something tackled her and swept her off her feet. A strong hand clamped over her mouth and prohibited her from calling out. A low, gruff male voice said something in a language she couldn't understand. She looked up as well as she could with her limited movement and caught sight of the green she had seen. This man was wearing some strange green eyepiece with flashing lights emanating across the tinted glass. The man was fairly large and built like a tank with spiky red hair that jutted out almost perpendicular to his forehead. His coal eyes looked down at her, peering into her soul. She tried her best to memorize what she could see of his features in case she needed to identify him once she was free of his grasp but she was cut short as she felt a quick stab into her arm. Everything faded to darkness.


	2. Plan in Motion

He hadn't been there when his men had brought her on board. He hadn't anticipated that the scientist in question would be outside alone when the ship approached its destination. Confident that they would have to break into the compound, he took the time to contact the king regarding their arrival. The cockpit of the ship was fairly impervious to noise from the cabin, making it the choice spot for a private conference with the king.

"This had better be important," the king's low voice drawled through the cockpit. His image appeared before Tarble.

"Your highness," Tarble bowed as low as the mechanisms around would allow. Raising his head back up, he made eye contact with his older brother through the use of holotech. "We have reached destination earlier than anticipated. Mission is ahead of schedule."

The king breathed slowly through his nose. "Very well. No trouble, I presume."

"None, your highness. Everything was according to plan," he responded, his voice even.

"Everything was according to plan and yet you arrived early? Curious," the king said, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. He had always doubted the non-battle skills of his brother.

Tarble bit at his tongue. "If it please, your highness…"

"Save the formalities, Tarble," he said with a bit of venom. "Get the woman and return. I want to have this whole thing behind us as soon as possible."

"Of course, _your highness_ ," the younger Saiyan said mockingly. "I will update Nappa with our departure as to not bother you."

A disapproving scoff sounded from the other side of the line. "Harvest celebrations begin tomorrow. It would indeed be best to contact Nappa in regards to your progress. Raditz should be by in a standard turn to complete the purge. He is currently stationed about a half turn away."

"Yes, brother," Tarble noted. A standard turn was equivalent to seven rotations on this planet. That would give them enough time to obtain the woman in question and be far, far away. Another few words with his brother and Tarble was in the silence of the cockpit once again, disconnected. He rubbed at his brow and sighed, taking a moment before walking into the cabin of the ship.

They had been in transit for all too long, nearly fifty standard turns. He longed to put his feet on solid ground once again. Given enough time, they would find a high land formation to house the ship while two of the soldiers flew to obtain the woman. They had another fifty standard turns on the return flight home. If it wasn't for his laboratory in the ship, he would likely have gone completely mad about three turns in.

Though born into nobility, Tarble would never have a chance at the throne. It wasn't like he held any ambition for power, but his one key to life was that he would never challenge his brother for the throne. From birth, the younger brother to the current king was put into the Underclass, a ranking lower than the lowest fighting class. He was raised to be the brains of the planet, a necessary yet underappreciated group of individuals referred to as Techs. Unlike his docile predecessors, what Tarble lacked in fighting strength he made up for in sheer willpower. From a young age, Tarble had been innovating Saiyan technology by leaps and bounds. It was his perseverance that had gotten him to this mudball planet at the current moment.

One of his Tech mentors, a man by the name of Lilek, had lived the majority of his life believing that there was something about Saiyan blood that was keeping them from reaching their full potential; he called it "thickening in the blood". He had proposed his idea to Tarble's father's father with nearly no evidence to support his claims. Power hungry, yet open minded, the great-great-king humored Lilek and allowed him to conduct research on this idea. The attendants in the Royal Counsel had questioned the king's allowance. As the doors closed behind Lilek, he assured the Counsel that there was nothing that could improve a true Saiyan warrior other than combat and bloodshed. Nothing from Lilek's research reached that same Counsel again and the memory was essentially forgotten.

During the days of Tarble's training in the Tech ways, he stumbled upon a collection of work under the title "Thinning the Blood".

"It's nothing," Lilek said, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. "I have been meaning to purge that file."

"It's brilliant," Tarble said after a moment. His eyes darted across the calculations as he flipped through the projected pages. "Do you really think this could work?"

Lilek clapped a hand on his pupil's shoulder. "Long ago, many orbits before you were born I believed that I could better our race—imagine a generation that could tap into their full potential early in life and then go _beyond_."

Lilek stared into the infinite, his mind piecing together the fragments. As soon as the wonder came, he snapped back into the moment. He sighed, "Enough of that. We benefit our people now by improving armor. It's best we get back to what we are assigned to do."

Tarble had taken a copy of Lilek's research and pulled it out when he returned to his quarters later that day. He didn't sleep that whole night because his mind was racing, calculating. By the morning he had worked through all of Lilek's research. What Tarble discovered was that Lilek had set aside all of the information Tarble had needed to begin testing. Without explicit permission from the king, he had secretly recruited men from the lower class ranks and had paired them with females of other species. Though interbreeding was incredibly taboo in Saiyan culture, it _did_ happen following purges and other interstellar interaction. Tarble had located several women from similar lines as Saiyans and had bred them to Saiyan males. One species in particular had promise; a race called Earthlings. The data showed a very similar genetic makeup to that of the Saiyans, perhaps the closest they had ever seen. Nearly a decade ago, a few technicians had traveled to Planet Earth and had acquired the strongest female that they had to offer. Though the female couldn't hold a candle to even third-class Saiyan women, she had managed to carry a demi-blood to term. This had proven to be a huge step in the right direction, as none of the other chosen females had made it through the process and unfortunately, at least in Tarble's analytical mind, neither had the offspring.

The demi-blood was born to Raditz's younger brother, Kakarott. Though both of the brothers were born third class citizens, both had managed to slightly elevate themselves beyond their birth ranks. Raditz had wormed himself into the Purge Squad, which was better than working in mercantile or mining, but was the lowest rung on the Capitol ladder. Kakarott was stationed at the Khahtmaj, the massive training center at the planet's equator. The Khahtmaj region only permanently housed the soldiers that staffed the training center; temporary dwellings housed whomever was training at any given time. Because of the sparse population at Khahtmaj, Kakarott and his experimental family unit stayed below the radar.

The demi-blood had astounded the technicians from his time of birth. The boy showed a very mild temperament, which was unusual in itself, accompanied by a staggering raw power. When news reached Tarble, the tech smiled; everything was progressing according to Lilek's hypothesis.

Perhaps thinning the blood would really work.

He had approached his brother a year and a half after the initial test. The demi-blood child had been trained by his father, as was allowed, at Khahtmaj. The boy had grown exponentially in his short time training. Confident in his findings, Tarble sat with his brother to discuss the subject _mano a mano_. The younger Saiyan's thoughts were that if the process had worked with a third class soldier and an Earthling female, the process should work with the King's blood as well. Because the king was queenless, but not heirless, the idea was marginally easier to get across. Convinced only at the prospect of bolstering their race, the king reluctantly agreed.

Before Tarble had left the confines of the palace, however, the king had put parameters on the experimentation. He would worry about all that later.

Kale, the captain and his close confident, met him as he stepped from the cockpit. His expression was solemn, yet pleased. He said in a deep voice, "Technician Tarble, the woman has been captured. She is on the table as we speak."

Tarble was shocked. He cleared his throat and then spoke, "This is good news. Thank you, Captain Kale."

The taller man nodded before sidestepping his companion and entering the cockpit. Regardless of their current purpose, they certainly couldn't stay hovering above the mudball for too long. They would need to head for the nearest fuel station, which would take about two standard turns. Perhaps then he could step out and feel solid land beneath his feet. The loud humming signaled that they were taking off. He strolled down the sterile white corridor towards the examination room. The doors whooshed open to reveal his comrades standing around the examination where the woman lay comatose. There was a lot of work to be done between now and their arrival on Planet Vegeta. The woman would need to spend half the journey in the modified regeneration tank in order to get her physiologically ready for the differing conditions on their home planet. In addition to readying her muscles and bones for the increased gravity, they could also use the time to force the language into her brain. Because of their intergalactic travel, largely in small pods, Saiyan Elites used their time traveling to acquire new skills through auditory learning. Surprisingly, the archaic idea of listening to recordings was an exceptional way for warriors to gain knowledge they simply lacked the time to obtain.

Glasra, the lone female besides the captured Earthling, was preparing the regeneration chamber with the modified soaking solution. Because she was to be comatose for so long, special preparations were made to keep her from turning into a soggy vegetable. Trata, the Earthling's captor, was carefully administering injections that would assist the processes once inside the tank. Tarble sighed and leaned against the lab counter, mentally preparing for the journey ahead. If anything was wrong from here on out, he would lose his brother's trust in his mission. There would be nowhere to go from this point and they would have to scrap the research all together.

As Trata finished the series of shots and Glasra began the filling sequence, his breath really began to catch in his chest. The first quarter-turn would be the crucial time where the injected compounds would either take or her body would shut down. Considering the painstaking amount of investigation that took place in selecting a female, he would be tempted to scrap the hypothesis and let the brutish Elites interbreed themselves into extinction if the plan fell through. Trata and Glasra carefully removed the Earthling's garments and outfitted her in the under layer of the modern Saiyan battle garb. The stretchy material would allow for more forgiveness than the strange thin textiles she was previously outfitted in. Carefully, Trata placed the female into the tank and slid a breathing apparatus over her mouth and nose. Glasra pressed the start command and the tank sealed itself with a final hiss. The experiment had begun.

As his companions left the laboratory, chatting nonchalantly amongst themselves, Tarble approached the glass front of the regeneration tank. He pressed a gloved hand against the cool surface and leaned in to peer inside. The female's face was relaxed under the influence of the slowing compound that Trata had administered. Deep down, he felt an unfamiliar pang of guilt for taking the female from her home. As soon as the feeling came, he pushed it down, reminding himself that the abduction was for the betterment of his people. Considering that Raditz was going to arrive to purge the planet in one turn, it was for the female's benefit that she was in her current place. The planet had been on the Galactic Hit Trade for at least two generations; it was far overdue for annihilation.

He stepped away from the tank and headed for the light panel. He switched the lights off and gave one final look back at the blue glow of the tank before closing the door and pushing the situation from his mind.


End file.
